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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608281">Soft Spaces</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_like_barnes/pseuds/blue_like_barnes'>blue_like_barnes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fluff and Smut, Oral Sex, Sex, Smut, Vaginal Fingering</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:02:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,507</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608281</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_like_barnes/pseuds/blue_like_barnes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes loves a girl.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>116</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Soft Spaces</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He draws in soft pastels.</p><p>It’s the medium, he thinks, that feels most like love. </p><p>Onto textured pages bound at the edges, he paints those broad and feathered swipes of chalk, pressing the pads of his fingertips against them, blending with intention.</p><p>He maps the green of open fields, and grey stoned cliffs of snow capped mountains. Smooths out rocky bluffs overlooking clear blue pools and blurs the sharp steel of streamlined cities. Places he’s been. Places he wants to go. He catalogues his wanderlust into journals bound in cloth and vinyl, between pages of cut glassine. </p><p>But his hands always tend to favor home.</p><p>It’s a word that has taken on new meaning for him. A person, not a place. <em>Home</em>. </p><p>And when the ache of absence grows pervasive in his chest, when he wishes more than anything he could tap his shoes together three times and be inundated again by the timbre of your laugh or the scent of your skin, he renders you carefully there, into those open and honest biographies. </p><p>He shapes the depth of your stare and the curve of your pout. The arch of your neck and the pattern of your curls. He finds his hands, in moments of deepest longing, stay perpetually shaded with blended tones of brown.</p><p>He pours love into those images, the way a poet would words, fixing the pages before carefully tucking them away- <em>Volume Number 57 of Bucky Barnes’ Heart.</em></p><p>
  <em>-</em>
</p><p>He had found a lot in the time since everything changed. </p><p>When the universe was ripped open and pieced back together again, and he was left with only a fleeting goodbye from the one person who had always anchored him to the world.</p><p>“Live your life, Buck,” he’d told him, holding onto his hand with spotted and weak gripped fingers. The time wizened eyes of a man who had finally taken his own advice had bored into Bucky’s own, ever stern and insistent as he’d said, “Enjoy it.”</p><p>So he had.</p><p>He had found peace with himself and purpose in his work. Reconciliation from all the men he had ever been and all the things he had ever done, aided by the faith in who he had become. </p><p>He had found solace in the things that made him happy again. Big and small. Old hobbies revisited and flourished, first in the pages of Steve’s own sketchbook, only half filled when left behind for the ages. (That was Volume 1)</p><p>He had found partnership with Sam, and a familial love he missed and craved, never expecting to gain it back again. He had sat at dinner tables and broken bread, had earned the badge of honorary Wilson and wore it with the deepest and utmost pride.</p><p> He had found himself. </p><p>And he had found you.</p><p>Or, you had found him. </p><p>That’s what he says, anyway. <em>I’m so glad you found me</em>- on the slip of a tease, the corner of his mouth quirked whenever he speaks it to you and makes you laugh.</p><p>Because he’ll never forget that day you first sought him out, holed in the back of the gym, sweaty and slowly recovering from a shrapnel injury, just to tell him how much his tac suit sucked. To let him know SHIELD had done him a disservice by not making it to your specifications. That he’d be sitting much prettier and in a lot less pain if they had. And he’d been so enamored by that and, frankly, so smitten by your conviction that he’d let himself fall and never once looked back.</p><p>So, <em>I’m so glad you found me</em>, he tells you. In more ways than one.</p><p>There are moments he has to bring himself back to Earth again. When it all feels like more than he deserves, and he’s caught in loops rereading the words you send him while he’s gone. Over and over, until he’s wishing for the moment he can have his arms around you again.</p><p>In those moments, he sometimes benefits from the assist of a swift kick beneath a diner table. A snap back to reality and two grinning faces that watch him from the opposite side of a red vinyl booth. </p><p>“Earth to Barnes-” Sam says, and he realizes he’s done it again. That he’s heard nothing and invested less in another post mission meeting. That his plate of sausage and pancakes remains untouched before him, swimming in pools of syrup amongst his poetic waxing, and the only real pressing thought he’s had all morning is that today is the day- the one where he gets to go <em>home</em>.</p><p>“Hmm?” he blinks, tapping out of his phone, setting it aside and pushing his fork around in a feeble attempt at attentiveness. </p><p>It isn’t bought. Only exacerbates those matching grins as Sam laughs, “Are you stupid, or stupid?”</p><p>And the blonde ponytailed head beside him nudges into his shoulder, </p><p>“He’s in love,” Sharon Carter says, lifting her brows as he meets her gaze, “Remember what that’s like?”</p><p>Sam shakes his head and touches her lips, softly murmurs, “No idea-” but when he looks at Bucky again, it’s with that pervasive stare of knowing, “Guess we should hurry up and get you back to her, then.”</p><p>-</p><p>He hits the compound on two wheels. Proverbially speaking, of course. Arms full of luggage, and open roses with the faintest flush of pink. With your favorite cedar scented candle with the wick that crackles, and a paper bag full of pad thai, because he’ll be damned if he shares you with anyone for the next twelve hours <em>at least. </em></p><p>He forces himself into a shower, because he <em>needs</em> it, and notices all the little things you’ve left in your wake. </p><p>Your slippers and pillow on his side of the bed. The <em>Missed you</em> scripted in your handwriting on the paper pad stuck to the counter. The bookshelves in the office that are a little fuller than when he left them, steady progress on the melding of two separate collections. <em>Oh</em>, that really makes his heart thump.</p><p>He’s not sure he’s taken a full breath before he’s out the door again, dressed in burnt orange knit and soft worn leather, hair still damp but sleek and contained. He runs an impossibly sweatless length to the atrium of the science wing, and punches the elevator code to the chem lab floor. </p><p>He spots you first, solely focused, swirling flasks beneath a vented hood. </p><p>He’s drawn you in white before. Buttoned in your lab coat with goggles dangling playfully off your fingertips. His favorite dress of yours has always been bottle green, but he’s starting to envision that change. </p><p>He takes a moment to watch you work, to admire you in the world you’re so ensconced in. And then he steps closer to the window that separates you, and slowly raps onto the glass. </p><p>Your reaction is immediate. His name mouthed on surprised lips, accompanied by an effervescent smile. </p><p>He waves and returns that look in kind as you start the methodical dismantling of your work space. Flasks emptied and rinsed, hood shut off and wiped down. Gloves snapped and trashed and hands scrubbed up to your elbows. Your coat and goggles get stored away last, and you’re tapping at that little imprint they leave behind on your cheeks when you step into the hallway and pull the door behind you.</p><p>“This is early,” you breathe, fitting into his open embrace after your standard post-mission once over to make sure he’s all there. It’s like stepping into home. Warmth and familiarity and someone sorely missed.</p><p>He holds you close and slides his nose over your cheekbone and murmurs, “Yeah?”</p><p>“Yes,” you answer, directing his mouth to yours and kissing him long and sweet until he feels it in his knees and there’s a resonant little exchange that follows of,</p><p>“Hi…”</p><p>“Hi-”</p><p>“<em>Hi</em>.”</p><p>It’s a practice in restraint to keep his hands mostly to himself. Fingers squeezed and swinging in yours as together you cross the compound and expound on all the goings on in one anothers absence. </p><p>It’s a fleeting study, abandoned quickly as you press close against him while he’s fumbling for the keys to the door, and earnestly you murmur, “You look <em>so</em> good, by the way.”</p><p>There’s something cinematic about the way you stumble inside, arms slipped beneath the knit of his sweater, mouth already untethering him like the heartsick boy he is. </p><p>The top half of his clothes hit the carpet before the door clicks into the lock, and to your delight he growls, low and deep beneath hands that rove the expanse of taut muscle across his chest.</p><p>Not to be bested, and <em>so</em> eager to touch back, he slips his own hands beneath your pants and panties, greedily palming your ass as he shoves them to the floor and promptly he hoists you up into his arms.</p><p>You reward him with a sound of delight, with fingers that move into his hair, undoing the tie that binds it and tugging onto still damp strands just the way he likes. </p><p>He groans against your skin, mouth sloppy, eager along your mouth, your jaw, your neck. He braces you against the wall and thumbs open the buttons to your blouse, careful not to pop any, because he’s a gentleman, <em>dammit</em>. </p><p>Impatient growing hands tug down your bra and grip your breasts, his mouth slides over your nipple, and his name leaves your lips in a puff of desire as your fingers tug ever harder.</p><p><em>God</em>, he’s missed you.</p><p>The way you feel. Those delicate little noises you make as he navigates your body. Breathy sighs that make him rock hard beneath you and scrambling to hold all his ministrations together as he reaches awkwardly for the zipper to his jeans.</p><p>You’re so wet already, it’s an easy slip between warm velvet, and he settles into you with a groan as your hands slide down and nails press hard into his shoulder blades.</p><p>There are stars in those marvelously deep eyes of yours, wondrous and ardor filled as he fucks you into the wall. Fast, but not hasty, metallic gripped hip as he thrusts deep and urges in a low timbre, “Come for me,” with his lips hovering over yours again, “<em>baby</em>.”</p><p>He takes you apart there, first. Makes you squirm and scream before moving you to the bed and laying you in the place just below where you left your pillow. </p><p>Your sweet words hum into his ears. Something about reciprocity that he shirks outright as he knocks your knees apart and settles his face between the apex of your thighs.</p><p>“Alright, <em>alright</em>,” he says placatingly, before dipping his tongue to your cunt and silencing anything other than a succession of whimpering moans of pleasure. </p><p>He could do that forever. Taste you, stroke you, slip his fingers inside you and make you breathe that supplication of his name into the air around him. He could master the art of making you come and call it a profession and never dread a day’s work again. </p><p>He could live in the heat of your sex as long as you’d let him, but after a few of those peaks, you’re threatening him - <em>James Barnes</em> - </p><p>“Ah, given name. She’s serious-”</p><p>-and pinning him down to the bed with strength you reserve for moments like these, when he’s voracious and insatiable and you demand to give his cock the attention you think it deserves. </p><p>It’s almost pathetically quick between your hands. Inside your hot, wet mouth, but he really does not mind the show, and he comes hard with a cry that’s guttural and low. </p><p>His heart beats six ways from Sunday, shuddering violently as your tongue moves along every spent and sensitive nerve of his before climbing up his body and kissing his own taste into his mouth, “Glad you’re home,” you say, “<em>baby</em>.”</p><p>You’re unmovable after. Naked and tangled and tethered to the world by the love of the other. And it’s <em>fine</em>, because he doesn’t really need to move. He doesn’t need to eat, or sleep. He doesn’t need anything, but that soft feel of your skin pressed into his. </p><p>You notice the little things he’s already left behind. The flowers he placed onto your nightstand. The crackle of the candle burning on the dresser. </p><p>His cheek is rested just beneath your breasts, fingers skimming along your bare thigh, when you notice the sketchbook sitting on top of the unpacked duffel bag left on floor beside the bed. </p><p>You reach for it, and silently he awaits your judgement, drawing shapes into your skin as you carefully flip the pages separated by cut glassine. </p><p>Florals this go round. </p><p>Your curves and features sketched among lilacs and roses. Behind sunflowers and full bloomed frills of peonies. Colorful and vivid renderings of some of the things you most love. To say he missed you hard was an understatement, evident on every inch of paper he’d devoted to you.</p><p>When the silence stretches long, he presses a kiss to your torso and lifts his head, venturing his gaze onto yours again. </p><p>“You like ‘em?” He hedges, half-heartedly waiting for the moment you tell him he thinks about you way too much. </p><p>It’s a silly thing to even jokingly entertain, because he picks up easily on the awe sweetened lilt of your breath, despite the, “Barnes, you need a hobby,” that carries it.</p><p>He chuckles, sliding up beside you as you close the sketchbook like it’s made of something precious, setting it aside to give your full attention back to him.</p><p>“I have one, sweetheart,” he teases, “And when SHIELD ain’t paying me to do it, I have to admit I’m a little stuck on you-”</p><p>Fingers tumble through his hair and slip along his jaw, “You’re so soft,” you whisper, and your smile is sunshine radiant. </p><p>He loves it when you call him that. </p><p><em>Soft</em>. Spoken in tones of adoration as your mouth brushes somewhere along his own. Because, despite his more recent actions alluding to the contrary, it was never a term he envisioned would be used to describe himself.</p><p>Soft. <em>Soft</em>.</p><p>“<em>Me</em>?” He asks, swallowing back the desire that creeps along his insides again, entertaining one more kiss before letting a smile dimple his chin, “Found some alterations on my tac vest this go round-“</p><p>You scoff, “Carefully engineered and reinforced alterations? That happen to have been sewn into everyone’s suits?”</p><p>His smile only grows, “Sure,” he says, “But everyone else’s didn’t come stitched with a little heart on the chest, now, did they?”</p><p>And you fall silent at that. Eyes meeting his again, and you glow-</p><p>“<em>Soft</em>,” he accuses, slipping his arm around your waist, drawing you to his chest and murmuring between kisses, “So damn soft. Baby soft, even.”</p><p>You laugh low and gentle. And you- you are absolute fucking sunshine in his embrace. </p><p>“<em>Your</em> baby,” you answer, “just yours.”</p><p>Heart beating six ways from Sunday. <em>Again</em>. </p><p>“Okay,” he relents softly, “just mine.”</p>
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